NPU may spend $1M more per year to increase natural gas capacity

Faced with rapid consumer growth in its natural gas division, Norwich Public Utilities may pay nearly $1 million more per year to a regional provider for access to a larger pipeline that officials say would meet anticipated capacity over at least the next 15 years.

Faced with rapid consumer growth in its natural gas division, Norwich Public Utilities may pay nearly $1 million more per year to a regional provider for access to a larger pipeline that officials say would meet anticipated capacity over at least the next 15 years.

But officials pledged no rate increases would be implemented to cover the cost.

“Without adequate pipeline capacity, NPU risks not being able to serve its current customers and cannot compete to bring in new ones,” John Gregg, an attorney at Washington, D.C.-based Miller, Balis and O’Neil, told the Board of Public Utilities Commissioners last week.

Known as the Algonquin Incremental Market project, the plan seeks to increase the flow of natural gas into New England by up to 25 percent. NPU already gets 8,340 dekatherms worth of gas per day from two existing Algonquin Gas transmission lines. A dekatherm is a unit of energy equal to 1 million BTUs.

Algonquin Gas is a subsidiary of Houston-based Spectra Energy. Officials told NPU’s board that Alonquin has agreed to let the utility trade in its capacity from one of the projects to take part in the Algonquin Incremental Market.